Adoption East Midlands newsletter August 2023

The start of a new school year means transitions for children. Whether it’s moving to a whole new school or simply moving up a year and starting afresh with a new teacher, transitions can be tricky times for your children. To help you prepare for this, we have collected some useful resources for families who might be nervous about the start of a new school year.

Visit the link below for support and helpful information.

Last month ITV aired a brand new hour-long documentary about Derbyshire adoptee, Multiple Gold Medal winning Paralympian swimmer, Ellie Simmonds.

In the programme, Ellie explores the relationship between disability and adoption in 'Ellie Simmonds: Finding My Secret Family'. The documentary uncovers a raw and emotional journey of personal discovery, whilst Ellie tracks down her birth mother who gave her up for adoption.

You can watch the documentary in full on the ITV Hub by visiting the link below.

Here at Adoption East Midlands we have our own team of dedicated home finders who continue to work on new and creative ways to meet the needs of the children we’re finding homes for. 

Last month the AEM home finding team hosted an event in Mansfield for prospective adoptive families to come and meet members of the team, and learn about the children within the region for whom adoptive families are currently being sought. Fourteen families attended the event, and lots of information was shared. The feedback from those who attended has been very positive, and a further event is currently being planned for later in the year - we’ll share these details with you nearer the time, so keep a look out in our upcoming newsletters.

Our multi-disciplinary team project began in April 2023 and is now growing in momentum and strength.  We are excitedly awaiting the secondment of a speech and language therapist as well as the recruitment of a full-time clinical psychologist. Both are from local NHS trusts within the region and we anticipate that both posts will be up and running in autumn.

Continuing with the development of the multi-disciplinary team youth and education offers, we will be recruiting two education worker posts and two youth worker posts. The job advertisements will be out in August and interviews will take place at the beginning of September. Our education offer is being developed in close collaboration with the four Virtual Schools in our region and the youth offer is being developed with Nottinghamshire Youth Service which will provide services across the whole region.

We’re looking forward to developing and launching this holistic support offer for our AEM families!

Visit the link below to find out more about the variety of support we offer to our adopters.

We're looking to recruit an experienced adopter to a part-time volunteer coordinator as part of the developments being made to our multi-disciplinary team. 

The purpose of this role will be to co-ordinate a team of volunteer peer mentors who we hope will be able to support our prospective adopters through the training, assessment, and matching process as well as post-order and beyond.  

From September 2023 we will  begin two further co-production workstreams as part of our multi-disciplinary team work, one focussing on teenagers and another focussing on culture and identity. If you have a teenager at home or if you are part of a multi-racial family and would like to share your experiences and opinions as part of a group, please get in touch.

If you would like to volunteer as a peer mentor, or if you are interested in the volunteer co-ordinator role, we would love to hear from you. For more information please get in touch with a member of our team via the link below.

The Children and Trauma Community Hub (CATCH) is a brilliant online resource for adopters, foster carers, special guardians, education professions and practitioners.

On CATCH you’ll find webinars hosted by subject experts, personal experience interviews, podcasts, e-learning courses and more.

You can now purchase memberships directly through CATCH for £5.99 a month or £60 annually. It's a great resource with a wealth of information that both staff and adopters alike can benefit from.

Visit the link below to sign-up and find out more.